Trump’s threat to annex Greenland by force is not bluster. What the New Yorker called a “ludicrous, deadly” plan marks a dangerous step towards wider war, another move in America’s increasing use of military violence to shore up its declining position as supreme global power. Control over Greenland is only part of a wider US strategy – the whole Arctic region is in its sights. While seizing Russia’s valuable Arctic territories would require a sustained open war, Greenland, Scandinavia and even Canada represent easier US targets.

Trump’s threat in 2024 to make Canada the US’s 51st state – as well as his imposition of punitive tariffs – quickly produced results. Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister – while talking up Canadian autonomy – obediently announced a huge rise in spending on the military, in order to take “full responsibility for the security of our Arctic.” Canada is now buying 88 American F-35s, installing an Over-the-Horizon radar system, and buying a dozen submarines for a total of $100 billion spread over decades.

The US squeeze on Canada follows the pattern dished out to all its allies: threats, tariffs, subjugation.

When Trump threatened to annex Greenland, Denmark similarly talked tough, vowing that its 300-year colony was under its protection, insisting that “control over Greenland is not up for negotiation”. But it quickly announced that it would repeal its longstanding ban on hosting US nuclear weapons and would raise defence spending in line with US demands. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen admitted publicly that “everything has to be on the table now.” Denmark’s 2014 claim to the North Pole and large parts of the Arctic seabed – which it hoped would gain US endorsement in exchange for greater participation in annual military drills – now looks naïve.

Even without a US occupation of Greenland, the Americans “already run the place” as one former US European Command officer put it. For example, Texan oil company Greenland Energy, closely associated with Trump himself, is preparing to drill without permission for what it believes is $1 trillion worth of crude oil, prompting a “strong warning” from the Greenland government. The warning is a face-saving exercise, given that US companies like REalloys are now being been granted rights to mine the biggest untapped rare earth mineral deposit in Greenland.

The US now has open-ended military access to Greenland and “pockets of sovereignty” via its bases there.

Meanwhile, the small population of Greenland – colonised and abused by Denmark for 305 years – remains largely opposed to foreign control and large-scale extraction of any kind, and is being ignored.

Two other Arctic nations, Finland and Sweden, have recently been absorbed into NATO, whose land border with Russia now extends for 1,340 kilometers. US troops in northern Finnish bases pose an immediate threat to Murmansk over the border, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet, nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered icebreakers, and vital to Russia’s economy as one of the few deep-water ports within the Arctic Circle. More dangerous still, Finland has agreed to allow the deployment of US nuclear weapons right “on Putin’s doorstep,” as the Telegraph put it.

Finland’s anti-Russian foreign policy aligns with its history – in 1940, Finland’s virulently anti-Communist leader Mannerheim invited Germany to occupy the country and Finland fought the Red Army alongside the Nazis from 1941-44. As in Ukraine, Finland’s pro-fascist past is celebrated by current politicians and used to feed contemporary Russophobia. Finland is now raising arms spending towards 5% of GDP, and cutting social services to do so. Its president boasts of a million-strong army trained in Arctic conditions.

Sweden, too, the beacon of postwar social democracy, has abandoned its 200-year-old neutrality and become the 32nd member of NATO. Its rapid militarisation goes hand in hand with privatization and swingeing cuts to welfare, hurting children and immigrant families in particular. Sweden’s recent discovery of rare earths in its far north makes it an even more important prize for the US.

Norway, likewise, though already a NATO member, is increasing its arms budget annually to 3.5% of GDP. It is also conducting unprecedentedly large military exercises. In 2018, Exercise Trident Juncture gathered 50,000 troops from all the NATO countries plus soon-to-be members Sweden and Finland. This year, NATO conducted one of its biggest ever air exercises, Ramstein Flag 2026 over the Arctic.

Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland, Billy Long, suggested in January this year that it should become a US state, provoking a furious reaction from Icelanders.

US strategy is clear: impose direct control over the Arctic as rapidly as possible, as it is doing with the western hemisphere. This is to be done through NATO – a “significant force multiplier” for US power, as the Atlantic Council puts it. This is the opposite of the US abandoning the alliance. While the Arctic has not yet become a theatre of war, the expansion of American control is relentless and increasing in speed.

Unsurprisingly, Britain is doing all it can to promote war. The then foreign secretary Yvette Cooper argued that NATO should “double down” on Arctic security to counter what she called the threat from Russia, while a British Defence Committee hearing earlier this year suggested 2030 as the date that war with Russia might begin, and recommended the UK take a lead among the western allies in supplying weapons to the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.

Control over the Arctic is a US priority for three reasons. First, it gives the US geostrategic proximity to Russia and northern China. Second, the Arctic has huge natural resources, increasingly accessible as the ice cap melts. Third, important trade routes are opening up in the Arctic, again due to global warming.

Trump has made US ambitions clear: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” he said in January 2026, predicting that Greenland would be under US control by the time he leaves office in 2029. His Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, reinforced the confident message: “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”. Earlier US attempts to buy Greenland and Iceland in 1867 and 1946 were declined both times, though Denmark is on shaky ground when it argues that sovereignty is non-negotiable, having sold the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) to America in 1916. Greenland’s semi-autonomous status as a Danish colony means that there is a sovereignty vacuum that the US is exploiting.

During the Cold War, America constructed a number of military installations in the Arctic. Camp Century in northern Greenland was a ‘city under the ice’, part of a larger plan to build a vast network of tunnels housing missile silos called Project Iceworm able to launch nuclear weapons from beneath the ice that could survive a nuclear attack. This grandiose project, begun without permission from Denmark, was abandoned in the 1960s due to unsafe movements of the ice. Its decaying infrastructure now poses a serious ecological risk. Many indigenous people were forcibly evicted to make way for these installations.

Today, the huge investment – $185 billion – in the US’s projected Golden Dome missile shield is far more ambitious. Like the Reagan-era Star Wars project, it aims to give the US first strike capability. According to a report from the BASIC thinktank, the Golden Dome “raises fearsfrom other nuclear-armed countries [like China and Russia] that the US could launch a pre-emptive first strike, relying on the Golden Dome to protect the US from the incoming second-strike of any nuclear arsenals which survived.”

In addition, the existing US military base in Greenland, formerly Thule, now called the Pituffik spaceport is the most northerly US base in the world. It likewise tracks incoming missiles – with a 10-15 minute warning – so as to give the US military superiority and first-strike capability.

Meanwhile, NATO’s military exercises doubled in number between 2015 and 2020 and are growing in size and frequency by the year.

Trump’s willingness to abandon the strategic arms control (START) treaty with Russia shows the warlike direction the US is heading in. The US is preparing to fight a ‘winnable’ war against Russia and China.

Greenland has a trillion dollars of rare-earth minerals under its ice. One deposit alone at Kvanefjeld could supply 30% of global demand, according to geological surveys. The US needs to control such resources not only for its own use but to deny to other powers. Securing Arctic rare earth supplies would allow the US to challenge China’s current dominance of the market and, crucially, free its military industrial complex from dependence on Chinese components.

The struggle has started. When China tried to buy the massive Tanbreez mine in southern Greenland – it’s already a major shareholder in rare-earth mining in the region – US officials spoke directly to the CEO Greg Barnes to prevent the sale, softening the financial hit by providing US government money – a subsidy to the US mining company that bought the mine for less than the Chinese were offering. And when China made a bid to upgrade three airports in Greenland for $550 million – amounting to 17% of Greenland’s entire GDP at the time – Secretary of Defense James Mattis personally intervened to block the deal, arguing with his Danis counterpart that: “Beijing must not be allowed to militarize this stretch of the Arctic”.

Apart from rare earths, Greenland’s fast-melting ice cap provides fresh water, which is increasingly valuable, as well as glacial “rock flour” containing nutrients for raising agricultural yields. There are also major reserves of natural gas and oil.

US annexation of Greenland would hand it Denmark’s existing claims to large sections of the Arctic seabed, which up to now have allowed the Danes to punch above their weight internationally.

Similarly, Canada which is a dominant player in world mining with 75% of mining companies headquartered there, presents a major prize for the US to capture. Its Arctic territory, which is six times the size of Texas, 40% of Canada’s landmass, contains hugely valuable resources of nickel, gold, diamonds, lithium and other minerals, as well as valuable fishing and the major Northwest Passage sea route.

Major shipping routes cross the Arctic, which the US seeks to control: the Northern Sea Route along the northern coast of Russia; and the Northwest Passage along northern Canada.

The Northern Sea Route (or Polar Silk Road) from China will cut the journey time from Asia to Europe in half compared to crossing the Indian Ocean and going up the Suez Canal. Co-operating with Russia in developing the route, China has already launched a weekly container service to Felixstowe taking just 20 days. By 2050, once the route is ice-free for up to 6 months of the year, it will be the most used shipping route between Asia and Europe. Disrupting it is thus a priority for the US to stop China gaining fast reliable access to western markets.

More importantly, America wants to prevent China from evading a potential US blockade of the shipping chokepoints – the Straits of Hormuz, Suez or the Straits of Malacca near Singapore – which would allow the US to strangle the Chinese economy.

The US has already begun pushing back on Russia’s legitimate claim that the Northern Sea Route falls within Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZs stretch 200 miles from a nation’s coast). Similarly, it is disputing Canada’s claim to the Northwest Passage sea route, which lies in Canada’s EEZ. Annexing Canada and Greenland would hand the US the Northwest Passage on a plate.

Russia takes the US threat in the Arctic extremely seriously. Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov said in 2024: “Russia is fully ready for a conflict with NATO in the Arctic. We see NATO stepping up drills related to possible crises in the Arctic.” A year later, Putin expressed concern “about the fact that NATO countries are increasingly often designating the Far North as a springboard for possible conflicts and are practicing the use of troops in these conditions. We will respond to all this.” Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, reiterated that Russia will defend the Northern Sea Route and the associated Arctic infrastructure. “The Arctic is not just a vast part of Russia, but it is also an inalienable aspect of the cultural code of Russian citizens who were the first to develop the uninviting polar territories,” she said.

Russia’s Arctic territory is home to 2.4 million Russians (half the total population of the Arctic) and the basis for 20% of its GDP. The majority of Russia’s oil and gas reserves and rare earths come from the Arctic. Putin, in 2017, estimated the mineral wealth alone to be $30 trillion. Russia will not give it up.

The Arctic became crucial to building Soviet industrial power, using its natural resources to modernise rapidly, with Arctic explorers, workers and industrialists becoming national heroes as they built huge projects. During this Soviet period of industrialisation, the Russian Arctic became the most populous northern region in the world. Mining cities like Vorkuta provided good jobs and housing for many former prisoners reintegrating themselves into Soviet society.

After the defeat of the USSR, Russia’s Arctic population dropped by 15.5% as industries closed down. But now the old Soviet infrastructure is being revamped. Two peninsulas in northwest Siberia, Yamal and Gydan, are being developed with new ports and infrastructure to exploit their massive natural gas fields in co-operation with China (see map 3). Russia is building 30 floating nuclear power plants to supply remote settlements along the Northern Sea Route with power and has around 50 icebreakers to keep the route open. The US only has two.

With the Baltic Sea grown hostile since Sweden and Finland joined NATO, and the Black Sea problematic since Turkey barred Russian warships from entering it in 2022, the bulk of Russia’s navy is now concentrated in the Barents Sea, based on the Kola Peninsula 1000 kilometers north of St. Petersburg close to Finland, where Russia also houses nuclear missiles. Murmansk, the main base there, grew in importance during World War 2 as vital allied convoy route to supply Soviet Russia and is once again central to Russia’s defence.

China has gradually increased its presence in the Arctic, as a ‘near-Arctic state’. In 2013, it gained observer status on the Arctic Council, a body formed in 1996 to manage regional cooperation, consisting of Scandinavia, Canada, the USA and Russia but now in disarray after its NATO members suspended their own participation in 2022 following Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. China’s Polar Silk Road, part of its Belt and Road Initiative, is being developed in co-operation with Russia. Chinese companies are helping Russia develop its Arctic liquified natural gas projects.

The two countries have also conducted joint military exercises and border patrols as their relationship deepens. In 2023, joint Chinese-Russian patrols in the seas off Alaska prompted the US to dispatch destroyers. In 2024, Russian and Chinese planes operated together close to the Alaska Air Defence Identification Zone, airspace claimed by the USA in breach of international agreements.

China is also investing in Iceland, a NATO member which, since the 2008 banking crisis that brought down its three biggest banks, signed a currency swap deal worth $480 million and a Free Trade Agreement with China. In 2020 China opened the biggest embassy in the country.

After the militarisation of the Arctic during the Cold War, a short period of co-operation ensued – the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norway was shared territory between the Soviet Union and Norway for most of the 20th century and today Russians still live and work there but it’s an endangered experiment in co-existence. As Maria Zakharova said: “Recall that earlier the Arctic zone was distinguished by a high degree of interstate cooperation and the absence of conflict potential. Now, thanks to the efforts of NATO states, it has turned into a space of geopolitical competition. To strengthen their positions here, they, as usual, are ready to use force.”

In 2020, the US sailed 4 anti-submarine destroyers through the Barents Sea, showing its intent to deprive Russia of control over the Northern Sea Route and claim it for itself. On Russia’s part, it says it wants open and free Arctic cooperation within a functioning Arctic Council. In contrast, the US regards the end of the post-1945 order as the moment to “close a vulnerability window before it seals shut in 10 to 15 years.” That means militarily blocking access to the Arctic from the North Atlantic on both sides of Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, a chokepoint through which Russian and Chinese ships must pass to enter the North Atlantic.

What Mark Rutte calls keeping the Arctic Ocean “safe” in fact means shutting out Russian and Chinese shipping. The conflict is already underway – the British and French navies have begun attacking civilian Russian ships in the North Sea.